We have been hearing about how fake follower accounts seem to target celebrities. We wanted to see if that was happening in MMA. We used a control group of top 5 UFC athletes and the Champions. We mixed in some MMA media and the top promoters. The full spread sheet can be found here (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjMzhkLs9H43dEYtZEFFYkRmdHRnNnNJaVAyNWZuUlE&usp=sharing) the blog linked break downs the top 10 MMA influencers with fake or inactive followers and gives their Klout scores.

The blog is here:

http://www.ingrainedmedia.com/as-real-as-it-gets-except-on-twitter/

When we saw the results of the data we went on a search for the athlete with the most fake followers. The winner was Roy Nelson has over 90% fake or inactive followers.

If you read the spreadsheet and blog it kind of explains things. You can also see some patterns emerge. Some of the Brazilians have high % of fakes. Could be location. We even put the President of the USA in the control group so you can see that celebrities of all levels have fake follows. Fake follows does not mean you did anything other than become famous to get the fakes.

Frate we could not find a major difference between the fakes and inactive. We do detail what makes up a fake account and we do break the confirmed fake and "inactive". Read the blog and check the spread sheet.

Jama Fastic is a fake Twitter follower. This account has never tweeted, retweeted, engages with anyone, and can't be identified as a real human being or company in any way shape or form. You can also tell that Jama Fastic is a fake account when you look at some of the 51 accounts Jama follows:

· Justin Bieber

· LeBron James

· Katy Perry

· Jack Dorsey

· Sofia Vergara

· Ellen DeGeneres

· Barack Obama

· Leonardo DiCaprio

· Sarah Silverman

· Ryan Seacrest

· Justin Timberlake

· Lil Wayne

· Oprah Winfrey

· Kelly Rowland

For Jama every single follow is a celebrity. Why would someone create an account and follow these particular individuals? What do they have in common? Clearly there is a baseline of these types of accounts targeting MMA athletes.

This is the type of account we classified as a fake follower. It also reveals another source of fake followers - some high profile accounts just get followed as a way to automatically make a fake follower account seem real - they weren't bought but they are still very fake.

Jama Fastic is a fake Twitter follower. This account has never tweeted, retweeted, engages with anyone, and can't be identified as a real human being or company in any way shape or form. You can also tell that Jama Fastic is a fake account when you look at some of the 51 accounts Jama follows:

· Justin Bieber

· LeBron James

· Katy Perry

· Jack Dorsey

· Sofia Vergara

· Ellen DeGeneres

· Barack Obama

· Leonardo DiCaprio

· Sarah Silverman

· Ryan Seacrest

· Justin Timberlake

· Lil Wayne

· Oprah Winfrey

· Kelly Rowland

For Jama every single follow is a celebrity. Why would someone create an account and follow these particular individuals? What do they have in common? Clearly there is a baseline of these types of accounts targeting MMA athletes.

This is the type of account we classified as a fake follower. It also reveals another source of fake followers - some high profile accounts just get followed as a way to automatically make a fake follower account seem real - they weren't bought but they are still very fake.

I have a twitter account with no activity and only follow celebs and fighters.

Because Twitter is fucking gay and only a reading source on the toilet for me.

Twitter recently removed known fake accounts and known spammers. Our example of a "fake" in the blog is like an account created by a service that you would buy follows from. They likely plan on using it at some point.

We clearly state that having fake followers does not mean the athlete did anything. If you give me your twitter account I can add 3000 follows in 24 hours with no access to your account other than your account name.

Please read the blog it explains things.

Why is it important to know? In the real celebrity world people get paid to tweet. I have secured payment for my clients solely based on their social media reach. Advertisers are no longer saying social media does not work, they are saying the actual reach vs followers is skewed.

If you paid Roy to tweet to his 500,000+ followers only 8% will likely see it.

Facebook knows of this problem and they put the responsibility on the poster. If you want to reach more of the "friends" you have listed you have to pay to promote the post. The actual reach on a FB post today is less than 10% of your friends.

Pretty crazy. I get a lot of these accounts that follow me as well. No pictures, no tweets, no response if I tweet them. If they are real, I don't see the point. If they follow me then they must be interested in what I'm doing and somewhat of a fan so you think they would respond if I tweeted them

camozzi - Pretty crazy. I get a lot of these accounts that follow me as well. No pictures, no tweets, no response if I tweet them. If they are real, I don't see the point. If they follow me then they must be interested in what I'm doing and somewhat of a fan so you think they would respond if I tweeted them

Chris a lot of fakes target celebrities. you can find services that offer to sell you followers. The Jama account is likely one of those accounts. With gmail you can create a bunch of accounts and control them through services like hootsuite etc. So that account may be fake today but down the road it might actually follow some people. It will likely never tweet since there is not a real human behind the screen.

This forum has a lot of lurkers that do not post and sometimes celebs do bring out lurkers. Or maybe they are jsut mad that you changed your hair

I have a very real Twitter account and it looks almost exactly like that supposedly "fake' Jama Fastic account. I have 0 followers and have never tweeted once. The reason why people often have a similar short list of people they follow is because Twitter gives you an original list of suggestion of people to follow, which are pretty much always celebrities.

Internettufguy - Fake research is fake. To even call it research is a stretch. It is your OPINION that the accounts are "fake." You provide no quantifiable evidence that proves they are fake. I lurk on Twitter and follow a random group of people; does that mean my account is fake? You are just an attention whore trying to drum up interest in your business, which is obviously fake since I have never had any interaction with it.

Actually you are exactly the type of account an advertiser would want to avoid. you ar enot going to be influenced by the tweet if you lurk and are not engaging. If it was a real life social gathering you would be the guy not talking to anyone mad at the world and a Snickers wouldn't save you.

If you separate categories into "FAKE" and "INACTIVE", how come you put all under "FAKE" in a huge percentage on the big Top 5 highlight you put at the end of your article?

Doesn't seem right, if you want to list FAKE to make a big impact, not debating the criteria for fake used in your own article, you should highlight only the FAKE percentage according to what you posted on the article yourself.

Plus, Inactive can't mean the guy isn't reading stuff only. If you have tools to verify what accounts hasn't logged for X while, then one could really call those accounts inactive.

I know a lot of people here don't know who Jason Genet (Ingrained Media), but he is an internet marketing genius. HIs knowledge of ways to monetize things like social media and other areas of the internet are beyond anything I could imagine.

On that note, I need to speak with him about building a platform for my writing (I'm working on a few books)--and I'm not joking about this either.

Just because some people here don't see the value in this research/article, by no means makes it invaluable. I'm sure there are a lot of advertisers out there that really want to know this type of information.

I must disclaim that Jason was my manager at one time, and got me, and my entire pro team, sponsored with very good monthly salaries for years.

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